US - A Missouri-based renewable energy company is hopeful that its Renewable Natural Gas system using manure from Smithfield Foods hog farms will be operational by 2016.

Roeslein Alternative Energy made the announcement this week at Ruckman Farm, one of the nine Smithfield Foods Missouri hog production facilities involved in the largest livestock manure project of its kind.

“The technology we have developed is ready to be deployed commercially in a project that makes both economic sense and environmental sense,” said Rudi Roeslein, founder and President of Roeslein Alternative Energy.

“This is not just about converting the manure from almost two million pigs into renewable energy. It’s about taking environmental sustainability to a new level.”

Phase One of the system is nearly 50 per cent complete and involves the installation of impermeable covers and flare systems on the 88 existing manure lagoons at the Smithfield Foods hog finishing farms in Northern Missouri. The covers will reduce greenhouse gases by preventing the escape of methane to the atmosphere.

Phase two will involve fabricating and installing technology to purify the biogas captured by the covers and developing an inter-connection to a natural gas pipeline operated by ANR. The Renewable Natural Gas system is expected to be online by the summer of 2016.

The hog manure from the project will produce nearly 2.2 billion cubic feet of pipeline quality RNG or the equivalent of 17 million gallons of diesel fuel a year. An estimated $120 million in new work for Missouri is also being created by the project.